Studio City Moms’ Kookie Idea Is Rolling in Dough
Every American parent has had the experience. As Valley entrepreneur Susan Pasarow puts it: “How often has a parent looked at Play-Doh and said, ‘What if you could eat it?’ Because kids all want to eat it anyway.”
Pasarow and partner Jill Schiff have turned that insight into a burgeoning new business. They’ve invented Get Kookie, rainbow-colored sugar-cookie dough that children can shape into stars, turtles and anything else they can imagine before it is popped into the oven and baked.
Only a year after the Studio City neighbors began tossing ideas around over dinner, their craftable cookie dough is being carried in Gelson’s, Albertsons and other Southland supermarkets. The women recently flew to Bentonville, Ark., and persuaded Wal-Mart to carry the product. The giant discounter wrote an initial order for 2,000 cases.
“My mom is a role model for me,” says Schiff, as she sits in her home office playing with the happy stuff she helped invent. A former teacher, Schiff unself-consciously rolls bits of blue, green and yellow dough into little balls and presses them around the edge of a bright red heart. An expressive blue fish and a smiling flower with green petals are among the other creations on the aluminum cookie sheet, waiting to be baked.
Thirty-one-year-old Schiff grew up in Encino, where her mother, Marcia Grey, and her mother’s friend Marsha Heller started and built a successful business that sells women’s golf clothing worldwide. (Their line is called Marcia, of course.)
Watching her mother, Schiff says, gave her the courage to join with friend Pasarow, 35, to start their own business. Her mother’s experience also taught Schiff the importance of finding a partner you want to spend time with during the emotional thrill ride of creating a business.
The Birth of Something Big
Schiff and Pasarow, who between them have four daughters age 6 and younger, met in the ballet class attended by their older girls, Maddie Schiff, 5, and Anabel Pasarow, 6. (Anabel’s handprint appears on the outside of the Get Kookie box, and the names of all four girls, including 5-year-old Emma Pasarow and Ruby Schiff, who will be 2 on Monday, appear inside.)
Schiff had launched several businesses in the past, including a line of children’s clothing called A Goose Says Honk! Pasarow’s background is in marketing and public relations.
The women say they started out knowing only that they wanted to create a marketable product that involved cooking, art and children. At first, all they had was a memorable name--Van Gogh’s Kitchen, now the name of their company. They experimented with a number of product ideas before they hit on brightly colored, shapeable cookie dough. When they did, Schiff recalls, “We just looked at each other and said, ‘Now this is big.’ ”
The women point to their complementary skills as a key factor in their success. As a former teacher of fifth-graders, Schiff says her knack is for “finding things that hook kids.”
She’s the artsy/kookie/creative one who loves to mock up packaging and do things with her hands. Pasarow has the better business sense and is adept at marketing and promotion.
Ted Pasarow, Susan’s husband, is a food broker, and his understanding of how products get precious shelf space in retail outlets has been enormously helpful. “He guides us every step of the way,” says Schiff.
Schiff’s husband, Garrett, is a screenwriter whose expertise has been less relevant to the business, but who has also been supportive in myriad ways, especially when Schiff races over to Pasarow’s, three blocks away to solve the latest challenge the fledgling business has thrown out.
Making sure their cookie dough was safe was their first concern, which meant finding a suitable recipe that didn’t contain eggs--a potential hazard in uncooked dough, the kind many children like best. The women also researched food coloring until they found edible dyes that are both intense and innocuous.
“We’re using the same stuff that’s in kids’ toothpaste,” Pasarow explains.
The product’s consistency was an issue as well. The dough couldn’t be too greasy or sticky, nor could it be too dry. And it had to taste yummy. Before they came up with the right formula, they kitchen-tested hundreds of recipes, until their families began to complain, “Enough dough already,” Pasarow jokes.
The women think part of the appeal of their product is that it is good for quiet but active play, whether the occasion is a rainy weekend or a child’s birthday party. It is “involving,” says Schiff. And she is quick to distinguish their edible activity from the limited play possibilities of conventional refrigerated cookie doughs. “Slice-and-baking is something mom does with a knife,” she says.
The women started the business with an initial investment of less than $10,000. Pasarow says she and her husband think of the venture as the equivalent of a modest investment in the stock market. Even if the enterprise had tanked, they weren’t going to lose their house.
Learning the Business
Depending on the store, an 18-ounce package of the bright cookie dough retails for between $3 and $4, and the women say they are on the verge of making a profit.
Schiff suspects that the fact they are moms, “not corporate people,” has facilitated their acceptance by retailers. “We’re real green,” she says. But they are quickly becoming less so, and they are learning to appreciate such perks of the project as business travel.
Flying on business, even to Bentonville, Ark., can look real attractive to a person who spends part of most days car-pooling. As Schiff says with a smile, “I have a Palm Pilot, and I’m getting to know how to find your gate at the airport.”
The women are already thinking about the company’s next step. For Halloween, they have created Get Spookie, cookie dough whose four colors include black and orange.
And they may do Get Smoochie for next Valentine’s Day, with red and pink dough in each package. Imagine what a creative 5-year-old could do with that.
Spotlight appears every Friday. Patricia Ward Biederman can be reached at valley.news@latimes.com.
